


Absolution for the Good

by ice_hot_13



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:42:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28274781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ice_hot_13/pseuds/ice_hot_13
Summary: Din wants to take off his helmet without feeling like it's a sin; Fennec knows how to teach him he is good.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Boba Fett, Din Djarin/Boba Fett/Fennec Shand
Comments: 28
Kudos: 256





	Absolution for the Good

On Tatooine, Fennec watches two suns chase three moons, and she waits.

Din has returned with them, stumbled up the ramp to the ship with his head hung and his arms empty; he’s been falling apart in a way that was poised to take out Boba, and finally, that has happened. Boba is unmade by his helplessness, his failing, and at this, at the only thing that has ever felt important to him – Fennec has watched him fall in love with Din, a plea on the tip of her tongue, a _don’t hurt him_ that is impossible to promise. Even Din, even sweetest, most soft-spoken Din, cannot promise her this.

Boba says _I can’t do this_ and _I can’t do anything,_ but it’s monumental that he even wants to try; as always, he needs to hear things sharply, to have his spiraling stopped before it can pick up momentum. He was carried through his entire life by an unforgiving momentum, and Fennec is what finally makes it stop. She is the unmovable force that caught him, the only thing that has ever been strong enough to stop him, and she tells him harshly, so he can no longer hear any alternatives: _it doesn’t matter that you are a clone._

That he ever thought he could take care of Din – Fennec has praised him for it, this proof of a redemption already happening, a realizing and a becoming. It hurts to fail, she tells him, because he believed he could, and that is so much more than he could do before.

He comes to her, fallen apart, and is devastated that he wasn’t a safe enough place for Din, this the most unthinkable thing she’s ever heard. It takes a while, to work it out of him – Din went to take off his helmet in front of Boba, collapsed into sobs instead, and Boba has held it together only long enough to make it back to her.

Fennec was the one who had to reach for Boba. He was broken, looked to her and didn’t think he deserved to hold out his hand. To pull him in was itself an act of proof he needed – that he deserves this, that someone else can see something redeeming within him. Her lost legend who craves redemption; that he still hoped for it, after all these years, is itself a miracle he carries within himself.

She praises Boba for his newly broken pieces, for letting himself get so close to Din that he could be hurt, and she promises him he is still good. She waits for Din.

Fennec doesn’t know Din very well, though she’s come to understand him on a deep level. She barely knows the sound of his voice, but she knows he’s finding the ground shifting beneath his feet, knows he feels suddenly out of place in his own life. She knows he is lonely, even after he’s begun to reach for Boba. It’s in the downward tilt of his head, the inward curl of his shoulders; he is so very _soft,_ his whole being a hymn to belonging, a reverence for what he does not have written into every move. His creed promised belonging, but he has found himself alone.

When he comes to her, he is quiet, and when he speaks, it is as heavy as a confession of sin. _I want to take my helmet off,_ he says, and he explains like he is only finding the words as he looks for them now, following a path in tentative steps. He tells her he’s only taken his helmet off three times – once when he was dying, once in the Imperial base, and once for the child.

_It was the right thing to do, with the child,_ he says, but his head is hung even as he says it, and she knows what he’s trying to say. He wants it to feel right, he wants to feel in control of when it feels safe, and he can’t. He is haunted by guilt, though he knows it’s what he wanted, though he knows he needed to do it. _I want Boba to know my face,_ he says, his voice soft, guilty.

She doesn’t ask, if he knows what she does with Boba, and if that’s why he’s come to her; it’s obvious, that he’s seen it because it’s something he craves for himself, a shape easier to identify when it fits his own broken place. _I want to be good,_ he whispers, and oh, how different from Boba he is, though Boba wants the same thing.

_You’re being so good,_ she tells Boba, because he is desperate to have it recognized, because he is trying so hard to be.

_You’re being so good,_ she tells Din, the first night he comes to her room and is overflowing with neediness, because he doesn’t know.

This is all she wants to impress upon Din, at first. He is good, he is so _good,_ and she croons it to him, pets her fingertips along his shaking thighs and turns a deaf ear to his pleas to be punished. _Harder, harder,_ he begs, and she fucks him in slow, deep thrusts, makes him ride out every wave of pleasure until he is sobbing from it.

She still has never seen his face, though she has seen all the rest of his body, has learned precisely how to make him shiver apart beneath her hands. He is a sensitive, shaking thing, and she drags everything out for as long as she possibly can, brings him to the brink and backs off, over and over, makes him tremble and cry. It takes a long time to get him to the point of begging, and as soon as he does, the moment he asks, she gives him what he wants.

_Good,_ she praises him, _so good, Din, you’re so good._ His shoulders inch towards his ears in embarrassment, he ducks his head and goes quiet, but she still tells him. Eventually, he gives a tiny whimper of pleasure when she says it, and it is the first time he’s agreed that he’s _good._

Slowly, Din no longer seeks absolution. She senses the shift within him, the slow disappearance of the shame he believes is inherent; _you’re so good,_ she’s been telling him, and he is believing her. He tests boundaries in a way Boba never does; Boba never needs proof that he can be bad, has felt acutely the potential for it within himself. As harsh as she is with Boba, she has never told him he wasn’t good; he would internalize it, never stop hearing it.

Din needs to hear it. Sweet, suffering Din, who lashes out when he’s not allowed to suffer for sins he hasn’t committed. She saw this coming, in how he struggles against her refusal to punish him for nothing.

_Be still,_ she tells him, because he needs something to push back against. She fucks him with two fingers until he is squirming, hips pressing back into the motion, knees spreading as he tries to rut against the bed. _Be good,_ she warns, and he whimpers high in his throat, and doesn’t listen. She lets him roll his hips downward, until his dick is painfully hard and leaking, until his thrusts are fast and desperate, and then she pulls him back towards her, seats the toy deep within him in one thrust, and she doesn’t move.

Din squirms, whimpering, and her tight grip on his hips doesn’t allow him to move the way he wants. She strokes only a fingertip over the wet head of his cock, to a shuddering groan from him.

_I said to be good,_ she tells him, and she lets him wait it out for a good amount of time, until he’s clenching helplessly around the toy and his arms have given out, shoulders shaking with the effort it takes not to try and rock his hips.

_Please, please, please,_ he whispers, _I’ll be good._

_Will you?_ She asks, because she wants him to see very clearly that it’s a choice, that he’s capable of it; she wants him to relearn how to be good by his own terms.

He is a mess, by the time she lets him come, but there’s something steady about him that she notices more frequently now. When she tells him _you were so good for me,_ he’s begun nodding along in pleased agreement.

She’s begun to look for the moment when he feels ready to take off the helmet himself. His frustration with his creed has begun to feel palpable, a sorrowful reluctance in the set of his shoulders when he leaves them for meals, a restlessness to his hands when she has him on his back atop the sheets, the lingering way he looks towards Boba like the distance between them is more than he can bear anymore.

_Good,_ she croons, _keep being good,_ as she’s pressing deep inside him and he’s shuddering for it, hands clenched in the sheets so he won’t touch himself; he keens when she shifts his thigh further back so she can get deeper, and his back arches when she hits the right spot inside him.

_Please,_ he gasps, but it’s more desperate than she’s heard him before, _I want – I want to take it off._ His dick jumps and leaks steadily, and he’s shaking all over, panting breathlessly. He’s almost said it before, has gotten as far as _I want to_ and dissolved into wordless whimpers, and she recognizes this as the ghost end of the plea, waiting to be spoken.

_Would that feel good?_ She asks him, and he trembles, nods frantically. _Then yes,_ she says, and his hands go to his helmet, lifting it off. He gasps for breath, and his eyes are somehow exactly as she’d pictured – deep, pleading, a little nervous. _You’re being so good,_ she says, and he nods frantically, eyes welled with tears, a plea still on his face. _Look at you,_ she croons, _being so good for me._ It relaxes him, and he sinks into acceptance, lets himself be praised until his whimpers confess his pleasure. 

The change is a lovely, breathtaking thing; he remains shy about showing his face, but the way he looks at Boba can be seen now, a pure adoration at home on his sweet face.

_You decide the higher power that you answer to,_ she’s been teaching him, and he is unburdened by the need for forgiveness, lightened by the dawning understanding that he has done nothing wrong by showing his face, betrayed no creed by answering to its higher purpose of belonging.

She tells him he’s good, draws sinful moans from his lips and praises him until she sees the guilt washing away.

_I’m good,_ he finally whispers, and it’s a prayer, the words to the hymn of belonging his body is always singing. He is good, he deserves to give himself to those he loves, he does not need absolution when he’s committed no sin, the love he aches to express is divine.

On Tatooine, Fennec watches two suns set, and then three moons rise in the sky, and she wonders if every trinity doesn’t feel slightly holy, for how balanced it feels, how perfectly complete.


End file.
